Tag Archives: generators

There’s an energy crisis in Australia today. I hate to say ‘I told you so’. Actually, I really, really enjoy telling you I told you so. Here is the article I wrote on this topic in 2008. My main point was DON’T LISTEN TO THE POLITICIANS. WE NEED A RELIABLE POWER SUPPLY.

The end of the world is coming to Melbourne. Again. In the 1959 film, On the Beach, Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner waited in Melbourne to die from radiation poisoning. Now, according to friends, life as we know it will end soon for us. Let me explain. I hang out with engineers. They’re strange folk. I’m married to one so I know. They do calculations in their heads. My beloved, HRH, doesn’t yell at us to ‘turn off the lights’. He lectures us on how many mega watts will be consumed over a 20-year period. The family tends to turn lights off just to shut him up.

My friends and some esteemed institutions are hot and bothered about power outages. Summer has been hellishly hot. Power consumption hit a record in Victoria on the 10th January. It was, admittedly, a 40 degree scorcher, but schools and many businesses were shut. In the meantime, folks are rushing out and buying air conditioners. But each new swishing, hissing unit adds a burden to the system.

There’s no power crisis claims Rob Hulls while advising Victorians to turn off air conditioners. There’s no power shortage say suppliers while explaining recent blackouts as problems with individual electricity companies. You can believe them or do the maths yourself. Victoria has a supply capacity of around 10 million kilowatts. Let’s assume Melbourne has 1 million households-a conservative figure- and that we all want to be cool, which we do. If every household installs a mid-range 10 kilowatt unit, at peak demand, air conditioners alone will use up our State’s full power supply capacity.